The Imposter Syndrome is Real #EdTech

"Pretty soon, everyone is going to see that I do not belong here."

Whether it was as a student, an athlete, a teacher, and now in the business world, some version of that sentence has always run through my head.

The feeling that you do not belong can hang over everything you do. Every meeting and every presentation feels like a performance where you are just waiting for someone in the audience to start booing because they have finally figured out that you have no idea what the heck you are doing.

It can be exhausting.

Despite accolades, top marks on evaluations, positive feedback from managers, and plenty of evidence that I might actually know what I'm doing, there is still this lingering feeling that it is all a show and someone is eventually going to figure me out.

I share all of this because I know there is someone else out there who feels the same way. Maybe you need to hear that those feelings are mostly a bunch of BS.

Take a moment and think about all of the people in your life who seem like they have their crap together.

Now think about how many of them are probably figuring things out as they go.

Are there people out there who actually have it all together? Possibly, but I've never met one.

I think most of us are doing our best with what we know today and hoping that is good enough until we know a little more tomorrow. Maybe we're not really "faking it until we make it." Maybe we're just learning as we go and hoping nobody notices how much learning is actually happening.

Teaching is a perfect example of this.

Those first five years are basically spent treading water. Everyone knows the new teacher is going to struggle in a bunch of different ways. You are surrounded by veteran teachers who seem like they have it all together, and you assume they were probably like that on their first day in the classroom.

They weren't.

They struggled too.

The good ones help and mentor you when they can. If it is done right, you might not even realize they are helping you grow. They share a lesson. They give you a suggestion. They tell you how they handled a student. They stop by after a particularly terrible day and remind you that tomorrow is another one.

Then, somewhere around year five, something changes.

You realize you can actually do this.

You look back at some of those lessons from your first few years and realize they were terrible. Just absolutely terrible.

But they were the best you could do at the time because you were trying not to drown in the Education Ocean.

Eventually, you learned how to swim.

After more than 20 years in the classroom, I was pretty comfortable in that ocean. I knew what I was doing. I knew what I didn't know. More importantly, I had enough experience to know that I could probably figure out the things I didn't know.

Then I left the classroom and jumped into an entirely different ocean.

I'm a rookie again.

Of course I feel like an imposter sometimes.

I'm new at this.

Maybe that is the part of imposter syndrome I need to get more comfortable with. Feeling like I don't know what I'm doing doesn't necessarily mean I don't belong. Sometimes it just means I'm doing something I've never done before.

Maybe I'm not an imposter.

Maybe I'm just a beginner again.

I also think there is a healthy amount of imposter syndrome that can be good for us. A little bit of self-doubt keeps you honest. It makes you ask questions. It pushes you to learn. It reminds you that there are people in the room who know things you don't, and maybe you should listen to them.

The problem is when you feel like a fraud but refuse to do anything to level up your learning.

After a while, that isn't imposter syndrome.

That's a decision.

So, I'm trying to get comfortable being a rookie again.

I don't need to know everything right now. I do need to keep learning. I need to ask questions. I need to surround myself with people who know more than I do and be willing to listen when they offer advice.

I did that when I was a new teacher, and eventually I learned how to swim.

Hopefully, I can do it again.

I think the key is being coachable and that will be the topic of my next post.